This year, the List Gallery has been home to many professional exhibits in a variety of media, from artists with different interests and backgrounds. Starting last week until the end of the semester, it will be home to several senior thesis exhibitions.
Two of these exhibits, works of painting and sculpture by students Temple Price ’15 and Emily Lipner ’15. Lipner’s work, titled “Meditations,” is a collection of gouache — somewhat like an opaque watercolor — paintings that use color and perspective expertly. The paint looks both liquid and waxy, often as if it’s dripping and holding still at the same time. This use of the specific variety of paint as well as even tape is all part of Lipner’s artistic vision.
“Many of these paintings used tape to create hard lines, or to contain the fluidity of water-based media within a hard-edged form,” she said.
The shapes are abstract but also reminiscent of furniture and shelves, everyday objects that are easy to forget about but stick in the back of your memory.
“I sought to look critically at the spaces that I frequently inhabit, especially campus spaces and my studio in particular, to extrapolate and call attention to forms in our worlds that we may not immediately recognize,” said Lipner.
Many of Lipner’s pieces are series of small prints arranged in big paper panels that repeat — with minor variations. That’s related to the theme of understated spaces, the artist thinks. Her goal was to bring attention to these spaces in a way that was more innovative and interesting than painting a still scene.
“I meditated on these observations through repetitions,” she said,”creating multiple iterations of a single object or composition of forms so as to learn more about the shape relationships and color relationships within my painting.”
Take, for example, her piece “Exercises.” It’s an “iteration of a single composition of shapes” through which the artist may “play with the composition to underscore the versatility and endless possibilities inherent in color and form.”
One thing that isn’t apparent from a visit to the exhibit is the artist’s history, and how the work exists in context.
“My show was a major departure from the work I had done in earlier semesters, focusing on representation and the figure,” said Lipner. “I used microcosmic still lives of corners and interior spaces to depart from these subjects, leading me to the show I eventually produced.”
Sharing the space in the gallery was Price’s exhibition, a collection of huge wooden blocks delicately carved into humanoid bodies. Like Lipner’s work, which was inspired simply by her being in rooms, Price’s art pieces came to being as a matter of seemingly trivial consequence.
“My latest body of work started when I found large Douglas fir beams left over from the demolition of the old squash courts,” said Price.
Each sculpture is a contorted representation of a human figure: sitting, slouching, standing twisted. The work is very delicately made, with a startling attention to detail. Price used a number of tools and techniques to give every piece the same level of care and granting it a different artistic quality.
“The texture each tool creates is a reflection of both my effort and the qualities inherent in the wood it. This body of work is as much about the materials as it is about the human form.”
The dedication to the craft is not without its downsides, of course.
“Wood is a pain in the ass to carve. I have lots of splinters. The tools are insanely dangerous.”
While appreciating the many subtleties of the form is helpful in really appreciating the work, the power of Price’s art also comes from the immediately visible sculpted humanity of each piece. He plays on what he calls a “familiarity” with the human form, changing the orientation and proportions of the body in different ways in each piece.
As with Lipner, Price’s work represents a shift in focus from his earlier material. While he is no newcomer to working in wood, his idea of the medium has changed.
“Previous years of work have focused on functional works: mainly lamps and vessels,” said Price. “This is the first time I have attempted to sculpt the figure.”
These two collections, pictured, have been taken down. Now on display is work by Cookie Dou ’15, whose show is aptly titled “Small Watercolors.” It’s more straightforward, focusing on Dou’s ordinary daily observations. She stuck to more classical forms, and let her work serve as a practiced execution of a developed tradition.
Dou made use of the “portability” of the watercolor medium to incite what she calls a “deeper sense of appreciation for the mundane,” featuring everyday items like plastic forks and popsicle sticks. The typical perception of this subject matter (boring, mass-produced) is unrelated to the artistic quality of the work (carefully made and really interesting).
The rest of her work features cityscapes, foods, animals — items from both the foreground and background of daily scenes. Dou’s objective through her work, in many ways, is to freeze her mortal experiences in paint and give them more life.
“I’m able to capture fleeting moments really quickly and give my experiences a quality of permanence,” Dou said.
In addition to her dedication to art, Dou is a biology major who plans on entering a medical profession. Her experiences in labs and other traditional academic work allow her to use art as an effective emotional release.
“I’m much less focused about myself and my personal journey when writing a science paper, as the paper is about the research and raw data,” she said, “while my art thesis and this upcoming show is entirely personal.”
Dou’s work is on display from today until April 28, alongside the exhibition of her classmate Ava Cotlowitz ’15 (work pictured), which offers beautiful rendering of cows, among other things.
